The grand hall of Gorton Monastery before the restoration that has turned it into a thriving community centre. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

One day back in the mid-1990s, when I was still charged with youth and mischievous derring-do, I went out for a walk round central Manchester with friends to look at some buildings. It wasn't strictly a sightseeing tour. Fired by recent evictions of travellers and squatters from Otterburn Close in Hulme, we were looking for an appropriate empty building to occupy and turn into a community activist centre, an alternative arts zone, or whichever dream was inspiring us that particular day.

One building we examined long and hard was the London Road fire station complex, a huge, glorious Edwardian terracotta behemoth, right in the heart of the city. It sat boarded up, useless, slowly rotting amid the ugly tower blocks of the modern Piccadilly like a vast, sad monument to the victory of capitalism over culture. We had thoughts too about the magnificent Victoria Baths near to the university, similarly magnificent and equally neglected.

Sense prevailed over valour that day. Both buildings were too big, too challenging for our resources. Victoria Baths had an active friends group already and we didn't want to derail their plans. So we went for a pint and thought again. A couple of those involved at the time went down the legal route, securing access to an old mill in Ancoats and eventually founding the successful Merci sustainability centre, which is still thriving to this day. Others would later go on to help create Manchester's recurrent, floating autonomous zone the Okasional Cafe.

A few others, meanwhile, were not deterred by anything as trivial as common sense. A small group of green activists learned about the tragedy of Gorton Monastery. This astonishing friary, designed by Edward Pugin, sits in a deeply deprived corner of East Manchester and had been derelict for years. The doors had been broken in and the building had been repeatedly ransacked. Unique and irreplaceable statues had turned up for sale in a nearby budget antiques market. A year later, the building would be listed on the World Monuments Fund Watch list of 100 most endangered sites in the world, alongside Pompeii, Machu Picchu, the Valley of the Kings and the Taj Mahal. But in 1996, nobody seemed to care. So a handful of activists laid out sleeping bags, secured the doors and slapped on a Section 6 notice of occupation. Over the next few weeks, they organised repairs, community clean-ups and open days. They invited local media to come and visit.

It was only a few weeks before the bailiffs arrived and unceremoniously ejected the idealistic band, but the story didn't end there. One of the visitors to the open days, a rather genteel lady from Cheshire called Elaine Griffiths was so appalled by the ruination and inspired by the activism that she almost single-handedly formed a charitable renovation trust. As the occupation was evicted in full public glare, local politicians and councillors suddenly discovered an interest in heritage, wrung their hands and swore to ensure that the monastery would somehow be renovated. Sure enough, with respectable faces and political commitment, the grants, sponsorship and funding began to arrive.

Today, Gorton Monastery is a thriving community centre and cultural venue. Their website contains an extensive history of the building, with one notable omission. The decisive action by a handful of idealistic anarchists and ecowarriors, the occupation that saved the monastery, has been entirely expunged from the record. That is rather shameful, and a betrayal of the building's true history and heritage.

Victoria Baths, as you may recall, went on to win top prize in the BBC's popular Restoration series and is now well on the way to full renovation. The fire station on London Road is a different story. Decades of neglect have been addressed with nothing but abandoned plans. This time last year, communities secretary Eric Pickles rejected the council's attempt to reclaim the building from the current owners, Britannia Group, under a compulsory purchase order. We are one year further on and still nothing has happened. In desperation, Manchester people have now launched a petition to support a renewed CPO. It's a small step to take, but at least keeps the issue alive.

The justice secretary Chris Grayling is believed to be considering the criminalisation of non-residential properties, just as his government have already done to residential premises. The change would make criminals out of those currently battling to save London's oldest pub from property developers, just as it would have made criminals out of those who saved Gorton Monastery.

The fire station on London Road, Manchester, is still not a suitable cause for activist-squatters – it remains too large, too unmanageable, too difficult to secure. But I can't help wondering whether the great building's decay and debasement would not have been arrested and reversed far more quickly if that day, 16 years ago, my friends and I had thrown caution to the wind and succumbed to the temptations of that open window on the first floor.

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